00:00:02
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio.
00:00:06
Speaker 2: News. We welcome now on Bloomberg TV and radio former Congressman Beto O'Rourke, who, of course, ran for Senate against Senator Ted Cruz in 2018. He's now running Powered by People, and he's here with us in our Dallas studio. Congressman, thank you so much for being here. Obviously, you got very close in 2018. 2.6 percentage points separated you and Ted Cruz. You didn't quite make it. And I wonder, eight years later, what forces are in play that make this time around different and give James Tallarico a better chance?
00:00:35
Speaker 3: You know, that 2018 race, no one expected a result like that. Largest voter turnout in the midterm in Texas history. We had gotten closer than any Democrat in decades. And there was a sea change in Texas. Though I did not win, we saw a change in power in the state house and county commissioners courts. And we saw new leaders emerge, one of whom was James Tallarico, who was an insurgent Democrat taking on a well-funded incumbent Republican for the state house.
00:01:02
Speaker 1: That really began his career.
00:01:04
Speaker 3: What we have right now is someone who's extraordinarily gifted in communicating and connecting with the Texans that he wants to serve, not just Democrats, importantly. but independents and Republicans who are disaffected from the MAGA movement and today's Republican party. And in addition, we have 150 Democrats running for 150 state house seats. We haven't seen that since 1972, the year that I was born. So this is very different from 2018 in the best possible way for Democrats. I strongly believe that we are going to win and it will not just be for Senate. We have a chance for governor. for these state house seats and changing control of Congress through the contested congressional elections in the state of Texas.
00:01:44
Speaker 4: Representative, one thing you do know a lot about is fundraising. You greatly outraised Ted Cruz. And right now, James Tallarico is greatly outraising his opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton. However, Attorney General Ken Paxton just got an influx of money from the president. And basically, if the money is there and they're even, what else happens? does James Tallarico have to do to reverse the tides for Democrats in Texas?
00:02:08
Speaker 3: He's already doing it. He's traveling to meet voters where they are. He's going to the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas that almost no candidate from either party will visit because it's so hard to get to. He's about to start talking to Texans in rural, smaller communities that get written off by one party, left behind by the other.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: Money cannot make up that difference.
00:02:28
Speaker 3: So no matter how much Elon Musk or Donald Trump or any other billionaire or corporation pour into this behind Republicans, James Tallarico has the people and the power of the people of Texas is greater than all of those oligarchs or billionaires or corporations.
00:02:43
Speaker 1: Who want to come in.
00:02:44
Speaker 3: So that's why you see the desperation of holding a mid-cycle convention in Dallas, Texas. That's why you see the gerrymandering of five seats. That's why you see Trump. trying to stop vote by mail. Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth, just closed 92 polling locations. It's the third fastest growing county in the state of Texas, one of them at UTA, which is home to 42,000 students. These are all signs of desperation and panic from that party because they know this guy is going to win. So I feel very good about this, but it doesn't mean our work is over. 54 days left to go, and we have to make the most out of every single.
00:03:16
Speaker 1: One of them.
00:03:18
Speaker 2: President Trump on the stage night one of the convention last night promised that if the House and Senate are won by Republicans, he'll send every American adult American citizen a five thousand dollar Trump dividend. How do Democrats compete with that? What do you promise voters if the president is literally handing out money or says he will?
00:03:36
Speaker 3: I want you to be able to see a doctor or afford medication or take your child to a therapist so they're healthy enough and well enough to go to school and do whatever they were placed on this planet to perform in the first place. I want you to earn more than 725, which is a minimum wage in Texas, which means if you work one of those jobs, you're working three of those jobs to make ends meet. I want to see your son or daughter who is serving this country in the Navy or the Air Force, the Marines or the Army, be able to come back home from another one of these endless wars that we're fighting the middle east in other words i want to deliver change for you and your family that allows you to believe in the promise of america again these gimmicks of the five thousand dollars which will never get paid out because he's offered this before and he's never delivered they're just not going to find hold with the american people right now they want real change from real leaders there's only one party he's offering that right now it's the democrats.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: Let's talk about real change.
00:04:29
Speaker 4: One thing that the Democrats are discussing, you hear with certain candidates, is DSA, Democrat Socialism. And how do candidates that are more moderate, that really need to pick up the moderate vote, discuss that? What's the right messaging on that?
00:04:45
Speaker 1: I think you stay true to your convictions. You have the courage of them.
00:04:49
Speaker 3: The things that got you into politics and running for that office in the first place, you go out there and tell people how you're gonna make their lives better.
00:04:55
Speaker 1: So universal healthcare, at.
00:04:57
Speaker 3: A minimum expanding Medicaid in the state that came up with Medicaid thanks to LBJ in 1964.
00:05:03
Speaker 1: In 1965.
00:05:04
Speaker 3: You talk about making tuition more affordable at our public universities or restoring public tax dollar funding for local schools that has been shunted.
00:05:12
Speaker 1: Off to private schools through vouchers.
00:05:14
Speaker 3: Those might be the priorities of both the Democratic Party and the DSA. And as long as we're aligned on that, I think that's great. There's going to be some separation on other issues. That's OK as well. But I traveled to every single part of this state and the number of times that socialism has come up as an issue has been a total of zero. People are focused on their lives, the real problems and opportunities they have, and they're looking for leaders who are going to produce that change.
00:05:39
Speaker 1: And again, today, I think it's these Democratic candidates.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: You travel, as you said, talking to college students in large part, and especially as we're having this conversation on the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death, and you consider what Turning Point USA, his organization, has been able to do on the right across the country. You're obviously trying to do that here in Texas, but do you feel like Democrats nationally are behind on that effort of trying to reach out to young people?
00:06:03
Speaker 1: I do.
00:06:04
Speaker 3: When I'm on these college campuses, I'll be at the University of North Texas in Denton a little bit later today. Very often students say, why aren't there more politicians of either party showing up to talk to us, to listen to us? I think, unfortunately, historically, Democrats have written off young voters. They talk a good game, but they never show up to vote. I think the logic is we wouldn't vote either if no one had shown up for us. You've got to meet these young people where they are. They're at the vanguard of the change that we're going to see in this country. And very often when I'm on these campuses, I see the Turning Point chapter presidents. They come up and talk with us as well. They're looking for engagement and dialogue and change. And when you show up, you have a chance to offer that. So let's see more of that from our fellow Democrats showing up and meeting people where they are.
00:06:50
Speaker 4: So you show up at a lot of campuses and you meet with people. I think showing up and talking with students or talking with young people and actually getting them to the polls are two very, very different things. How do candidates or how do people that register kids and younger voters actually stay on that to make sure it comes to fruition?
00:07:10
Speaker 3: In 2022, during that governor's race in Texas, on the ballot were not just the Democrat and Republican, but 19 children had just been brutally murdered in Uvalde, Texas. The governor had signed the most obscene abortion law in the country with no exception for rape, incest, the life of the mother, You had the least insured population in America, meaning it's harder to see a doctor in Texas than anywhere else. And despite all of that, 9 million registered Texans did not cast a ballot. I believe it's not because they didn't care about these issues or that they don't love our democracy or they're not motivated to produce change. I think the election interference from Republicans, the voter suppression, the closing down polling places, the voter ID, all that stuff has kept people from being able to exercise their right to vote. So when we register someone on a college campus, we also ask them if we can stay in touch with them. We give them our cell phone number. We take theirs. We remind them the form of ID that they need to bring to vote, where their nearest early voting polling location is, the hours. and we remind them to vote until we can confirm that ballot has been cast. When we did this in 2024, we took a voter turnout rate for young people from 39% to 79%. This is the work that works, and Powered by People volunteers are all over the state of Texas right now as we speak doing this, and they will for every single day until this election is decided on the 3rd of November.
00:08:33
Speaker 2: What do you hear from young people about data centers and artificial intelligence more widely, frankly, because we've all seen the reports of people on college campuses who feel like their future is going to be in question because this technology is going to take everyone's jobs.
00:08:45
Speaker 1: How do you?
00:08:46
Speaker 3: We were on the University of Texas Arlington campus yesterday, and it felt like every third student I talked to was majoring in construction management. And when I would ask them, why are you doing that? Very often they said, this is a job that AI is not going to be able to do.
00:09:01
Speaker 1: To replace.
00:09:02
Speaker 3: They are as aware as anybody, maybe more than anyone else, because their entire future careers and lives will be determined by the choices that we make around AI today. They want to see at a minimum common sense regulations that do not exist in America today. There's also a lot of talk, and I'm one of those who support this, on some kind of meaningful pause on the development and progress that these AI models and agents are making as they continue to jailbreak the labs in which they're being developed, as they continue to invade, commit crimes, infringe on the privacy of everyday Americans. You marry that out-of-control AI with the flock camera surveillance state that is being developed in Texas and around this country, and you have the attention of every young person in America. I think this is a great opportunity for Democrats, and I think they're making the most of it right now, of talking about this threat to our civil liberties, to our lives, to the United States Constitution, and saying that we're going to produce the change that protects you and ensures that as we develop AI, we do this responsibly.
00:10:02
Speaker 4: We are seeing this as a major election issue now here in the state of Texas. We've seen some new requirements on data centers that are coming here. But what do you see the future of that in a state that says it really is here to welcome business?
00:10:14
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:10:15
Speaker 3: None other than Greg Abbott has changed his tune from claiming that Texas would be the capital of AI and just opening the doors, giving the farm away to every large corporation that wanted to build a data center through state incentives. He's now caught a whiff of the political winds and is trying to backtrack.
00:10:33
Speaker 1: I think it's too late.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for governor, has made this a central issue of her campaign. We are a ranching and a farming state. These ranchers and farmers are seeing the water tables drop precipitously low. They're seeing their soil poisoned. Their air has become more toxic. It's harder and harder to grow the food that we depend on and to lead the lives that Texans have become accustomed to. So this threatens our state right now. And there's only one candidate and one party who's standing up to that. Gina Hinojosa, James Tallarico, the Democratic Party. And I think that will be a deciding factor in the way that many people, including and maybe especially in rural Texas, vote in this next election.
00:11:12
Speaker 2: All right. We'll leave it on that note. Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke, thank you for joining us on Bloomberg TV and radio.
00:11:17
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you both.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio.
00:00:06
Speaker 2: News. We welcome now on Bloomberg TV and radio former Congressman Beto O'Rourke, who, of course, ran for Senate against Senator Ted Cruz in 2018. He's now running Powered by People, and he's here with us in our Dallas studio. Congressman, thank you so much for being here. Obviously, you got very close in 2018. 2.6 percentage points separated you and Ted Cruz. You didn't quite make it. And I wonder, eight years later, what forces are in play that make this time around different and give James Tallarico a better chance?
00:00:35
Speaker 3: You know, that 2018 race, no one expected a result like that. Largest voter turnout in the midterm in Texas history. We had gotten closer than any Democrat in decades. And there was a sea change in Texas. Though I did not win, we saw a change in power in the state house and county commissioners courts. And we saw new leaders emerge, one of whom was James Tallarico, who was an insurgent Democrat taking on a well-funded incumbent Republican for the state house.
00:01:02
Speaker 1: That really began his career.
00:01:04
Speaker 3: What we have right now is someone who's extraordinarily gifted in communicating and connecting with the Texans that he wants to serve, not just Democrats, importantly. but independents and Republicans who are disaffected from the MAGA movement and today's Republican party. And in addition, we have 150 Democrats running for 150 state house seats. We haven't seen that since 1972, the year that I was born. So this is very different from 2018 in the best possible way for Democrats. I strongly believe that we are going to win and it will not just be for Senate. We have a chance for governor. for these state house seats and changing control of Congress through the contested congressional elections in the state of Texas.
00:01:44
Speaker 4: Representative, one thing you do know a lot about is fundraising. You greatly outraised Ted Cruz. And right now, James Tallarico is greatly outraising his opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton. However, Attorney General Ken Paxton just got an influx of money from the president. And basically, if the money is there and they're even, what else happens? does James Tallarico have to do to reverse the tides for Democrats in Texas?
00:02:08
Speaker 3: He's already doing it. He's traveling to meet voters where they are. He's going to the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas that almost no candidate from either party will visit because it's so hard to get to. He's about to start talking to Texans in rural, smaller communities that get written off by one party, left behind by the other.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: Money cannot make up that difference.
00:02:28
Speaker 3: So no matter how much Elon Musk or Donald Trump or any other billionaire or corporation pour into this behind Republicans, James Tallarico has the people and the power of the people of Texas is greater than all of those oligarchs or billionaires or corporations.
00:02:43
Speaker 1: Who want to come in.
00:02:44
Speaker 3: So that's why you see the desperation of holding a mid-cycle convention in Dallas, Texas. That's why you see the gerrymandering of five seats. That's why you see Trump. trying to stop vote by mail. Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth, just closed 92 polling locations. It's the third fastest growing county in the state of Texas, one of them at UTA, which is home to 42,000 students. These are all signs of desperation and panic from that party because they know this guy is going to win. So I feel very good about this, but it doesn't mean our work is over. 54 days left to go, and we have to make the most out of every single.
00:03:16
Speaker 1: One of them.
00:03:18
Speaker 2: President Trump on the stage night one of the convention last night promised that if the House and Senate are won by Republicans, he'll send every American adult American citizen a five thousand dollar Trump dividend. How do Democrats compete with that? What do you promise voters if the president is literally handing out money or says he will?
00:03:36
Speaker 3: I want you to be able to see a doctor or afford medication or take your child to a therapist so they're healthy enough and well enough to go to school and do whatever they were placed on this planet to perform in the first place. I want you to earn more than 725, which is a minimum wage in Texas, which means if you work one of those jobs, you're working three of those jobs to make ends meet. I want to see your son or daughter who is serving this country in the Navy or the Air Force, the Marines or the Army, be able to come back home from another one of these endless wars that we're fighting the middle east in other words i want to deliver change for you and your family that allows you to believe in the promise of america again these gimmicks of the five thousand dollars which will never get paid out because he's offered this before and he's never delivered they're just not going to find hold with the american people right now they want real change from real leaders there's only one party he's offering that right now it's the democrats.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: Let's talk about real change.
00:04:29
Speaker 4: One thing that the Democrats are discussing, you hear with certain candidates, is DSA, Democrat Socialism. And how do candidates that are more moderate, that really need to pick up the moderate vote, discuss that? What's the right messaging on that?
00:04:45
Speaker 1: I think you stay true to your convictions. You have the courage of them.
00:04:49
Speaker 3: The things that got you into politics and running for that office in the first place, you go out there and tell people how you're gonna make their lives better.
00:04:55
Speaker 1: So universal healthcare, at.
00:04:57
Speaker 3: A minimum expanding Medicaid in the state that came up with Medicaid thanks to LBJ in 1964.
00:05:03
Speaker 1: In 1965.
00:05:04
Speaker 3: You talk about making tuition more affordable at our public universities or restoring public tax dollar funding for local schools that has been shunted.
00:05:12
Speaker 1: Off to private schools through vouchers.
00:05:14
Speaker 3: Those might be the priorities of both the Democratic Party and the DSA. And as long as we're aligned on that, I think that's great. There's going to be some separation on other issues. That's OK as well. But I traveled to every single part of this state and the number of times that socialism has come up as an issue has been a total of zero. People are focused on their lives, the real problems and opportunities they have, and they're looking for leaders who are going to produce that change.
00:05:39
Speaker 1: And again, today, I think it's these Democratic candidates.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: You travel, as you said, talking to college students in large part, and especially as we're having this conversation on the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death, and you consider what Turning Point USA, his organization, has been able to do on the right across the country. You're obviously trying to do that here in Texas, but do you feel like Democrats nationally are behind on that effort of trying to reach out to young people?
00:06:03
Speaker 1: I do.
00:06:04
Speaker 3: When I'm on these college campuses, I'll be at the University of North Texas in Denton a little bit later today. Very often students say, why aren't there more politicians of either party showing up to talk to us, to listen to us? I think, unfortunately, historically, Democrats have written off young voters. They talk a good game, but they never show up to vote. I think the logic is we wouldn't vote either if no one had shown up for us. You've got to meet these young people where they are. They're at the vanguard of the change that we're going to see in this country. And very often when I'm on these campuses, I see the Turning Point chapter presidents. They come up and talk with us as well. They're looking for engagement and dialogue and change. And when you show up, you have a chance to offer that. So let's see more of that from our fellow Democrats showing up and meeting people where they are.
00:06:50
Speaker 4: So you show up at a lot of campuses and you meet with people. I think showing up and talking with students or talking with young people and actually getting them to the polls are two very, very different things. How do candidates or how do people that register kids and younger voters actually stay on that to make sure it comes to fruition?
00:07:10
Speaker 3: In 2022, during that governor's race in Texas, on the ballot were not just the Democrat and Republican, but 19 children had just been brutally murdered in Uvalde, Texas. The governor had signed the most obscene abortion law in the country with no exception for rape, incest, the life of the mother, You had the least insured population in America, meaning it's harder to see a doctor in Texas than anywhere else. And despite all of that, 9 million registered Texans did not cast a ballot. I believe it's not because they didn't care about these issues or that they don't love our democracy or they're not motivated to produce change. I think the election interference from Republicans, the voter suppression, the closing down polling places, the voter ID, all that stuff has kept people from being able to exercise their right to vote. So when we register someone on a college campus, we also ask them if we can stay in touch with them. We give them our cell phone number. We take theirs. We remind them the form of ID that they need to bring to vote, where their nearest early voting polling location is, the hours. and we remind them to vote until we can confirm that ballot has been cast. When we did this in 2024, we took a voter turnout rate for young people from 39% to 79%. This is the work that works, and Powered by People volunteers are all over the state of Texas right now as we speak doing this, and they will for every single day until this election is decided on the 3rd of November.
00:08:33
Speaker 2: What do you hear from young people about data centers and artificial intelligence more widely, frankly, because we've all seen the reports of people on college campuses who feel like their future is going to be in question because this technology is going to take everyone's jobs.
00:08:45
Speaker 1: How do you?
00:08:46
Speaker 3: We were on the University of Texas Arlington campus yesterday, and it felt like every third student I talked to was majoring in construction management. And when I would ask them, why are you doing that? Very often they said, this is a job that AI is not going to be able to do.
00:09:01
Speaker 1: To replace.
00:09:02
Speaker 3: They are as aware as anybody, maybe more than anyone else, because their entire future careers and lives will be determined by the choices that we make around AI today. They want to see at a minimum common sense regulations that do not exist in America today. There's also a lot of talk, and I'm one of those who support this, on some kind of meaningful pause on the development and progress that these AI models and agents are making as they continue to jailbreak the labs in which they're being developed, as they continue to invade, commit crimes, infringe on the privacy of everyday Americans. You marry that out-of-control AI with the flock camera surveillance state that is being developed in Texas and around this country, and you have the attention of every young person in America. I think this is a great opportunity for Democrats, and I think they're making the most of it right now, of talking about this threat to our civil liberties, to our lives, to the United States Constitution, and saying that we're going to produce the change that protects you and ensures that as we develop AI, we do this responsibly.
00:10:02
Speaker 4: We are seeing this as a major election issue now here in the state of Texas. We've seen some new requirements on data centers that are coming here. But what do you see the future of that in a state that says it really is here to welcome business?
00:10:14
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:10:15
Speaker 3: None other than Greg Abbott has changed his tune from claiming that Texas would be the capital of AI and just opening the doors, giving the farm away to every large corporation that wanted to build a data center through state incentives. He's now caught a whiff of the political winds and is trying to backtrack.
00:10:33
Speaker 1: I think it's too late.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for governor, has made this a central issue of her campaign. We are a ranching and a farming state. These ranchers and farmers are seeing the water tables drop precipitously low. They're seeing their soil poisoned. Their air has become more toxic. It's harder and harder to grow the food that we depend on and to lead the lives that Texans have become accustomed to. So this threatens our state right now. And there's only one candidate and one party who's standing up to that. Gina Hinojosa, James Tallarico, the Democratic Party. And I think that will be a deciding factor in the way that many people, including and maybe especially in rural Texas, vote in this next election.
00:11:12
Speaker 2: All right. We'll leave it on that note. Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke, thank you for joining us on Bloomberg TV and radio.
00:11:17
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you both.
